Of Midnight Hours and Lights at the End of the Tunnel by Konnie Enos

 

It’s late, I’m yawning and I’m fighting sleep as I attempt, yet again to write a cohesive, intelligent, and most importantly comprehensible blog post.

Why am I doing this, yet again as the clock slowly counts down the minutes left until midnight? Yes, we’re talking minutes, though by the time I’m done, it’ll probably be well after the hour.

As I’m thinking about all the reasons that I have so little free time right now, I am repeatedly asking myself why I choose to do this.

I’m the one that committed to contributing to this blog every other week.

I’m the one who willingly took on handling our family’s finances.

I’m the one who committed to doing my share of the cooking and cleaning.

But mostly I’m the one who committed to finally getting my bachelor's degree.

Now the idea of going back to school wasn’t daunting to me. It’s not the first time I’ve attempted to get my degree as a mother. The first time I tried Royce was barely in pre-K.

I should have realized when both of my most recent attempts had me dropping out mid-term at least partially due to the stress. I look back at these semesters and wonder how I thought 12 credits was so stressful.

To help anyone who doesn’t understand the college system of credits. Each credit is supposed to align with 1 hour of classroom instruction. And for each credit hour, you should engage in 3 to 4 hours of study time. That means 12 credits would equal between 36 to 48 hours of study time. That’s a full-time job.

When you’re trying to do that on top of taking care of your family and running the household it can be very stressful. Now imagine having a job, even just a part-time one, on top of that.

Now, as you can imagine, each credit hour also indicates how much material there is to learn and how much effort you’ll have to put into it. Therefore a 1-credit class wouldn’t be that much work, whereas a 2 or 3-credit class would require more effort. For me this generally means I can do that 1-credit class in under 3 hours a week while the 2-credit class is going to take at least 6 hours and the 3-credit classes will require at least 12 hours of work, sometimes more.

While some people may take 12 to 14 credits, they are taking some easier classes mixed in with the difficult ones. For instance, in the past, I have taken as many as 13 credits in a semester and I’ve done so without taking more than three 3-credit classes.

Last semester I took four 3-credit classes, then added a 2-credit class. One would think earning a couple of B’s would be indication enough to reconsider taking that many 3-credit classes at one time.

It wasn’t enough warning for me.

I did look at not taking so many classes this semester. My idea was to take twelve credits and the remaining three over the summer. The problem was not one of the classes I still needed was offered over the summer. My only other choice would be to take some of the courses in the fall semester.

I rejected that idea and right now I’m not even sure why I decided I’d rather take 15 credits this semester. I suppose so I can get it over with. I certainly didn’t consider how much work it would be.

Not only do I have 15 credits, but four of my classes are the harder 3-credit ones. But it’s even worse than that. I’m doing my internship too. Internships require that you put in 10 hours of work per week. So, on top of the nearly 60 hours a week in homework that I have, I also need to put time into doing my projects for my internship. That’s well over 60 hours a week. AND I still need to do my share of the posts here, and then there is my share of the household chores.

Is it any wonder that I’m often still up at midnight trying to get one last assignment or task done?

Then, after staying up so late, I still need to get up at least no later than 7 am because fur babies want their breakfast. Of course, I also have a full slate of things to get done each day so sleeping in is never an option. I also always hope I can finish enough tasks and assignments so that I can get to bed at a reasonable hour. For me, that means before midnight.

Thankfully I can see the end of all this effort. Today there are officially only three weeks left. Then I can get back to having more time available for other things, like writing.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

Of Vacations and Work by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

I don’t know how your week went, but this past week for me wasn't fun.

For starters, my direct supervisor took her first vacation in two years leaving me to do her job. To say the least, I was overwhelmed just at the prospect of being the only one in our office for an entire week, let alone that I can only work twenty hours a week, and my supervisor puts in somewhere between forty and sixty hours a week.

For one thing, I was afraid the phone would be ringing off the hook. Normally I don’t answer the phone. And I felt out of my league the first time I answered the phone, but I managed it. I thought, “Okay, I can do this, just as long as it doesn’t ring off the hook,” and believe me it has.

My supervisor had messages come through while she was on the phone.

Though my week was going okay, I even had one day where I just sat around and knitted waiting for the phone to ring, then I got an urgent call. Dang, what do I do now?

I was panic-stricken and even texted my supervisor for advice.

From that point on, I did the best I could do for the client, except she wasn’t the only one, I got two more clients the next day. And with each call, I panicked. Though to be honest those two were not as urgent as the first. That first one could not wait until my supervisor got back, period.

I must add she left me a list of things she wanted me to do while she was gone, other than dealing with calls, those things were more in line with me really just being a data entry clerk, even if my training included dealing with clients.

She fretted that she didn’t leave me enough to do because I can type so much faster than she can write. I finish entering the data in less time than she takes to write up her notes, and her notes are phrases, abbreviations, and cut-off words, I turn that into full coherent sentences.

The thing is, I was only idle one day, and at the end of that day, I realized I hadn’t worked on one thing on her list. But it wasn’t all that hard. I did finish that list for her, despite dealing with calls.

But I’m also glad that week is over.

Though now we have to do our quarterly reports. I haven’t done those before.

My supervisor thinks I finish in a flash because I’m all caught up with the data entry. She never managed that with the data entry, ever. Her supervisor was in fact glad I started working there simply because she hoped I could keep my supervisor on task better.

From the second I finished inputting one case file my supervisor has fretted that she could keep me busy for a full twenty hours a week. And believe me, she has often said, “Uh, let's see, what else can you do for me?”

But I had all files current within a week of starting, and I even cleared out all her old files that didn’t need to be stored anymore.

I can complete more in five hours, four days a week, than she can manage in eight hours five days a week. Though admittedly she does have to deal with calls, and I don’t when she’s around.

The fact is, I’m just a fast worker.

I do like working there (when I’m not stressed out by taking care of clients). The work is easy otherwise.

The people I work with are great.

And I’m sure Konnie can do the job I have far more efficiently, mainly because, unlike me, she can multitask. I have to do one thing at a time. And she doesn’t have my heart condition, so she can work a forty-hour week.

Then there is also the fact that she types faster. Believe me, my fingers don’t fly as fast over the keyboard as hers does.

She has more work experience than I have too. Not only because she got married four years after I did, but because I was able to be a housewife my whole marriage, she worked on and off during her marriage to help make ends meet.

That and she has a college degree and I don’t.

But from all this, I think I could draft a story where a simple employee had to take over for the supervisor short term. Then again, it reminds me of Dick Francis’s novel “Straight” where the main character has to take over as head of his big brother’s company. Talk about being in over his head!

Anyway, Happy writing everyone!

Of Lost Files and Sheer Panic by Konnie Enos

On Wednesday, June 1^st as my blog post was going up Bonnie told me she did not have a copy of the picture. Okay, no problem. I had that saved, with all my other writing-related stuff, on one of my jump drives. Easy fix.

Then I ran into a HUGE problem.

I could not open that jump drive. AT ALL.

Panic set in.

That was the only place I’d saved any of my writing. Well unless you count that my computer automatically backed it up somewhere every time I plugged in any of my jump drives.

So okay, automatic backups. Where?

My first thought was my one drive.

It was not.

Not being able to find it on my computer I called my tech expert, better known as Royce, to help me. He always fixes my problems eventually.

He searched. After several minutes of fruitless effort, he found copies of my folders. You know the ones I’d made to save all my writing within. Wonderful!

I started clicking through them.

Every folder was empty. No documents. Not even old ones.

Royce said he’d try and advised me to let him save all my jump drives to his one drive. He did this. Well, for my other three jump drives. He still could not access the one with all my writing.

Being unable to find anything but empty files, I was understandably upset. I could find no other copies of my documents. Now it’s true that I’ve given copies of some of them to Bonnie and even Melinda, but I knew for a fact I had not given the most recent versions of my fantasy or my sci-fi to them because I’d worked on both since the last time that I shared either with anyone. And I had some stories that I’ve never shared, at all.

My only hope was to find someone who could access my jump drive and save the files on it. But that would take both time and money. I have no money to spare and am way too booked with schoolwork to take time off to find what I need. So, it’s waiting until I have more money and time.

All things considered; we’re talking months in the future. Even now, I have no idea when I’ll be able to afford to pay someone to try to access or fix my jump drive. I don’t even have time to get Bonnie and Melinda to find what copies they have.

I’m resigned to waiting until I finish school. Fortunately, this semester ends July 20^th, and it’s my last one. I’ll need to find work, but I should be able to dedicate some time to trying to retrieve what files I can.

I had no choice but to focus on due dates for both homework assignments and bills. So, mourning the loss of every file I had on all my writing, I tried to concentrate on, well more pressing things. Certainly not more important because as a writer your WIP files are the most important thing.

But in the back of my mind was still that niggling thought that my computer had been automatically updating a backup file on all my jump drives every time I used them. So there had to be a backup somewhere.

So, Monday, having a blessed reprieve from stressful levels of homework, I decided to dedicate some time to see if I could find those missing backup files. I knew they weren’t in one drive, so I investigated my Google Drive.

My opening page showed nothing promising. Clicking on “My Computer” and “Shared with Me” wasn’t helpful either. Clicking on recent brought up a page showing just my most recent activity, but it had a scroll bar.

I started scrolling down. And down. And down some more.

I’m seeing files that would have been on all my jump drives, except the one with my writing on it. But I’m seeing jump drive files, so I keep scrolling.

Believe it or not, I hit the jackpot!

I found exactly one file from my writing jump drive. And miracle of miracles there were followable links that lead me to all my files! Well, most of them. I could not find my post from two weeks ago or another paper I’d been working on.

Since the post was up, I still had a copy of it, so not lost. As for the other paper, I was sure I’d saved it somewhere and under a specific name. Since it wasn’t among my writing, I decided to look on my jump drive where I’d stored a variety of files. And I found that too!

Nothing like finding things you thought you’d lost. Oh, and back up your backups!

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.

 

Of Birthdays and Age by Bonnie Le Hamilton

This past Monday was my sister’s-in-law birthday. No big deal except this is the sister-in-law that lives here in Pocatello. Needless to say, I attended her birthday party Monday after work.

At one point during the evening, Shirley tried to tell a young friend of ours that she was fifty-eight.

I looked at her and said, “You are sixty-one as of today.”

Breanna, our young friend, took that in stride, but later when I mentioned I was forty years older than her, her eyes just about bugged out.

Now I must point out that Breanna is a home health aid for both myself and Shirley, and she knows that we have to be at least fifty to qualify for the program paying for her services. Also, she knew that Shirley was older than me, but apparently, she hadn’t gotten the memo on how much older Shirley is. As such, she had figured my age to be somewhere in my early fifties.

She was closer to correct than most people usually are. 😊

Breanna doubted I was really as old as I said.

I told her I was born in 1962.

She was still shocked and actually asked her coworkers present if they thought I looked sixty.

They were all surprised.

Okay, it’s in my genes. I do not look my age. I never have. Konnie can say the same thing.

And it really has little to do with our height. We just don’t look our age, and that has something to do with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

Anyway, EDS is genetic.

Konnie and I have mild cases of it, but a prominent side effect of this condition is not aging as fast as others. People with this syndrome just don’t look their age.

Now Konnie and I are on the recessive end of this problem, hence the “Mild” part. Konnie’s middle daughter inherited EDS from both her parents, and her father’s isn’t a mild form. It seems that mild plus medium equals severe. The poor kid got it worse than any of her siblings.

Of course, if she reads this, she’d probably point out how far into her twenties she is.

Yeah, I know, even Konnie’s youngest has surpassed the 20-year mark. Technically none of them are kids. But they are all twenty-nine or more years younger than me, so yeah, they still are kids to me.

By the way, for those of you who hadn’t heard already, my doctor confirmed I have a mild case of EDS on my last checkup. Explaining all my problems with my knee going out of joint. Which is minor compared to Konnie’s husband Jerry, or well, most of their kids have had way more problems than I have. They all have it.

Such is life though.

Konnie and I have other relatives who most assuredly had EDS. One uncle, in particular, could bend his thumb all the way down to his wrist. EDS is essentially “loose ligaments” some people have “looser” or more flexible ligaments than others.

Most contortionists probably have EDS.

In fact, CSI: NY did have an episode where the victim came from a long line of contortionists in a circus. During the show, a character pointed out that a lot of people with EDS became contortionists, simply because it was something not everybody could do.

Don’t ask me to do that.

I mean, back in my younger, slimmer days, I was quite limber, surprisingly so, but that was several decades ago.

Nowadays, the only aftereffects of EDS I have is a bad knee and the luck of not looking my age.

Then again, maybe Breanna and her coworker, all being in their late teens to early twenties, expect anyone who is sixty to have a head full of gray hair. 😊

Well, I do have a little white, down the center of my otherwise brown hair, just not a whole head of it. I also don’t have a whole lot of wrinkles.

As a teen, I hated not looking my age. Now it’s kind of fun.

But all this got me thinking about my characters and why I haven’t had one getting mistaken for being younger than they are. Or something like that. It’s not like it doesn’t happen to other people.

I read a story a while back about a young lady who was a teacher, and a fellow teacher took her for a student and snatched her phone out of her hands. And another young lady had a fellow teacher haul her into the principal’s office for being out of class when she was on her break period, and the principal was her friend.

So, there are stories about people not looking their age, and I’ve certainly experienced it, so why haven’t I written it?

Anyway, happy writing everyone.

 

Of Pets and Old Age by Konnie Enos

 

Some months ago, noticed that Mabel wasn’t her usual energic self, something we could expect from an older dog, but this time her tail was also tucked under. If you know anything about dogs, a tucked-in tail is something to pay attention to.

We took her to our vet.

She ran a few tests and we concluded that something was up with her liver. The easiest solution was a course of medications. The hope was that it would cure the issues and things would be back to normal. We ended up trying a few different medicine regimens until we hit on the one that we are now using. It looks like she will have to take medicine every day for the rest of her life.

So now our normal routine includes giving Mabel her medications twice a day. It’s a good thing we discovered Pillpockets because our dogs like those “treats” and rarely realize there are pills inside them. (Not even when they watch us put the medicine in them.)

Mabel got in the habit of chomping down her food and then running to me to get her twice daily “treat.” Since we weren’t having to fight her about taking her medicines, it was easy enough for me to give them to her.

So, no issues.

Then in late April or early May, we noticed she was running to get her medications before she finished eating. However, we just had to redirect her once and she would finish eating.

I thought she liked the treat so much she didn’t want to wait, so I started dropping her Pillpocket in her bowl with her food. Problem solved.

Until it wasn’t.

Most of our dogs when they are eating will put their face in their bowl and not look up until they are finished. Mabel’s always been one to at least glance around while she’s eating. There’s even been a few times when she went running to a door barking her alerts only to remember she was eating and run back to her bowl.

A couple of weeks ago we noticed she was constantly leaving her bowl. To go bark at a door. To take a trip to the backyard. To bark at another one of our dogs she thinks is misbehaving. Pretty much any little noise could distract her from her food.

We started having to watch her eat and constantly reminding her to finish eating.

Then I noticed some concerning behaviors.

When we first got her she displayed some serious territorial issues and wouldn’t let any of our children on my bed. She barely allowed Jerry to get in our bed. With effort, we eventually trained those territorial tendencies out of her.

This last week alone we’ve had several near scuffles where she snapped at one of the other dogs, but we were able to intervene before it became a dog fight. At least twice, the dog she snapped at didn’t appreciate it and we nearly had a full-on fight as some of us humans waded in, pulling the combatants apart. Which just required getting ahold of Mabel and pulling her away from whichever dog she’d decided to fight.

Thankfully, we’ve managed to stop them before any blood was drawn.

So now, her aggression is returning and she’s not eating without a ton of coaching.

This time our vet called me. No, not because she thought something was wrong, but to let me know what her latest blood work looked like. I asked her about Mabel’s behaviors.

She agreed that it was odd how Mabel wouldn’t stick around to eat her food anymore. Then, as any good doctor would, she asked me about specific things going on with Mabel. One was diarrhea. Another was bumping into things. Another was about her sense of smell.

Okay, she doesn’t appear to be blind, and she doesn’t seem to have diarrhea. So, our vet told me some things I could try to entice her to eat.

So, we keep trying.

Now she is refusing to finish her meals and is still being aggressive with the other dogs.

My thoughts keep going to the conversation I had with her vet because there was one other reason why we might be seeing these new behaviors.

My dog, who is now 11 years old (about 65 in human years), might be experiencing dementia. My husband still thinks she is losing her eyesight, and that would be a lot easier to deal with than dementia, but we don’t know for sure yet what the issue is.

For right now, we’re still attempting to find solutions. If those continue to fail, we’ll have to run some more tests and see if there is anything medically that we can do.

All this on top of the stress of taking 15 credits.

Smile. Make the day a brighter day. (I could use it.)

Decoration Day by Bonnie Le Hamilton

 

Monday is Memorial Day, but you know what it’s about?

 

The other day at work, they asked everyone what Memorial Day means to them. The Vet in the group said it was remembering those who have died. I was the one who said it was to remember and honor fallen heroes.

 

Who’s right?

 

Guess what, I am.

 

Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day and it was to honor those who lost their lives in the Civil War.

 

After World War 1, it became Memorial Day, but it didn’t become a national holiday until the late 1960s.

 

And it wasn’t always celebrated on the last Monday in May like it is now.

 

But let me point out, that it wasn’t so we could honor and remember our ancestors, it was so we could honor those people who gave their lives for our country!

 

Now for Konnie and me, that does include some ancestors, especially if you go back as far as the Revolutionary War. Then again, nowadays everyone includes all military vets, so we have quite a few more family members who will have flags put on their graves this weekend. Our father, an uncle, and a great-uncle on our side. I also have my father-in-law.

 

And that list doesn’t include the vets in our family who are still alive, like Konnie’s husband, my husband’s two brothers, and one of our cousins.

 

I’ve mentioned before that our great-uncle survived Pearl Harbor. My father-in-law served during the Korean War, our father and uncle served during Vietnam, and both our husbands, our cousin, and my husband’s two younger brothers all served during the first Gulf War (better known as Operation Desert Storm).

 

And I will certainly remember all of their services for our country this weekend, even if Veterans Day in November is supposed to be for honoring living Vets. I’ll remember them then too.

 

I’ll also remember them on Flag Day (June 14^th), Independence Day, and of course Veterans Day (November 11^th). Though I will also remember them on Thanksgiving Day, because without them where would this country be? Where would I be?

 

It is the men and women who gave their lives to this country that made this country so great. I will always be grateful for them.

 

So, this weekend, I will be going to McCammon, and possibly have a picnic. What will you be doing for the holiday?

 

And where it comes to writing, have you ever written a story that took place around Memorial Day? And if you have, what sort of things do your characters do for the holiday?

 

Whatever you have planned for this weekend, drive safe.

 

And happy writing everyone!

Of Efficiency and Focus by Konnie Enos

One of the classes I’m taking currently is Operations Management. Now going into this class, I knew it was about management, but I thought it was more about how you interacted with and managed your workers.

It is not. It’s about learning how to manage your workflow to efficiently produce whatever your product is.

 We’re learning things like how to order your processes efficiently and where to place stations to minimize movement between stations. Now as I was looking at this information, I thought of Lillian Gilbreth. She and her husband Frank Gilbreth were efficiency experts. Lillian used her understanding of efficiency to redesign kitchens from the large country kitchens that used to be common, to the modern efficiency kitchens where you can reach everything from the middle of the room, therefore requiring less time-consuming walking.

Turns out, there was a reason the information reminded me of the Gilbreths. They were among the people named in the book who contributed to the operations management systems we have today.

What this information does is brings the story of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, and their large brood of 12 children (six boys and six girls) to the forefront of my thoughts. Since I’m thinking about them and their efforts to reduce wasted motion, I’ve been noticing when myself and other household members waste motion.

I realized I wasted motion going back and forth between my bedroom and the kitchen when I needed food or had to do a chore. So, I started eating in the kitchen (as opposed to my bedroom) and doing some chores before I returned to my room. Then I realized I wasn’t remembering to take my morning pills when I did return to my room. Since one of those must be taken in the morning, and with food, I figured out my best option would be to take my medication with me when I went to eat breakfast. Problem solved.

Then I noticed how family members efficiently use or waste motion.

One way was watching how family members handled the chore of washing dishes.

As a rule, we household members will gather, wash, and rinse everything in steps. Doing each step before moving on to the next one. For the most part, where we differ is in how we dry and put them away.

Royce will dry every piece, placing the dry ones on the counter while he dries the next piece. Then, with the dishes gathered according to where they belong, he puts them away. Mostly efficient, but there is some wasted motion in how often he picks up each dish. Particularly to dry them and then put them away.

Melinda and I do the same steps, right up to drying and putting them away. We don’t place them on the counter between drying and putting them away. Those things that belong in the cupboard above the counter by the sink, we dry and place in the cupboard. Those that go across the room (mainly the silverware and utensils) we dry as we step toward where they go, putting them away as we finish drying. With the silverware and utensils, we grab all of them at once to dry and put away, so we aren’t going back and forth. This is the most efficient way because we aren’t wasting motion to pick the dishes up one more time.

Now Jerry is a different issue.

He doesn’t always gather all the dishes before he starts washing so he must make additional trips. He’s also prone to getting just some of the dirty dishes in one area and going back for the rest. (For example, taking only the plates off the table when there are also cups and silverware.) He will get all the dishes washed before he rinses anything, but then he really wastes motion.

Like Melinda and I, he dries all the things larger than silverware and utensils and puts them away. But then he will pick up each piece of silverware or utensil and then dry it, still standing at the sink, before stepping over to the correct drawer and putting it away. Then repeats it until they are all put away. Thus, repeatedly going across the room, with an already dry item, wasting motion.

I’m noticing all this wasted motion and I’m realizing what you are thinking about the most is what you will notice the most. It’s along the same lines as to how we notice the things that are most familiar to us. Such as twins noticing other sets of twins. Or noticing all the cars of the same make, model, or color as yours. It’s not that there are more of them, just that you notice them more often.

What do you notice?

Smile. Make the day a brighter day.